Shadowed Summer (11 page)

Flipping to the page, I mumbled, “I thought I imagined it at first.”

Ben shook his head in wonder, reading aloud. “ ‘How to Talk to Elijah.’ How about that?”

Running her fingers over the page, Collette exhaled in amazement, then jerked her head up. “That’s why you got sunburned!”

“No, I got sunburned ’cause I fell asleep.”

Ben touched my shoulder, and he dipped his head to look at me. “You all right?”

It felt low to shrug him off, but I didn’t want him touching me.

“I’m fine. I’m just tired. It took me and Daddy half the night to clean up his mess.”

“Oooh, you think Elijah’s jealous?” Collette lit up with that idea. “What if he’s talking to you because he’s in love with you?”

As far as I knew, and I didn’t know a whole lot, love wasn’t supposed to leave you crying in a closet with the police on their way. I shook my head. “No offense, Collette, but that’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“Why else would he come up into your room?” Collette persisted. “He didn’t come up into mine or Ben’s, did he, Ben?”

“Nope.” Ben flipped backward in my spellbook to read the other pages. So much for our secrets; so much for our curse on the first page.

“And he didn’t leave us love notes. . . .”

Making a face, I cut her off. “They’re not love notes!”

“Close enough.” Collette turned her gaze slowly, letting it linger on Ben for a minute before she went on. “And he calls you by name. It takes a lot of energy for a ghost to talk, and he always uses some when saying your name.”

“It’s only four letters,” I said. “It’s not like I’m Penelope or Elizabeth or anything.”

“Or Evangeline,” Ben added, waving the book slightly. “Do any of these work?”

Collette looked like she might yank it right out of his hands. “They all work if you do ’em right.”

Turning the notebook around, Ben held it up to show our spell for invisibility. “No kidding? I could use this one.”

Seeing a chance to change the subject, I threw in the part Collette left out. “It’s only good if nobody looks at you, though.”

Ben smiled, and suddenly I did, too.

“Anyway,” Collette said, holding her hand out for the spellbook, “whatever it is, you’ve got a connection, so we should do the board at your house.”

I gaped at her. “He’s already riled up—you want to make it worse?”

Collette shrugged. “I think he’s just frustrated.”

Seeing as how Elijah came and went as he pleased and could cart a whole riverbed into my room if he felt like it, I didn’t see how
he
was the one who was frustrated.

chapter seven

T
he inside of Nan Burkett’s trailer smelled sweetly artificial, like apple spice from a can.

Rose-patterned curtains covered the windows, matching the dusk-pink couch and creamy carpet. Curio shelves held a collection of porcelain Scarlett O’Haras, with the occasional kitty thrown in for variety.

“I have red pop and lemonade,” Miss Nan said, gesturing for us to sit down. When she walked, her hips swayed back and forth, her tight denim skirt whispering with each step.

I was pretty sure I caught Ben staring, but since I had been, too, I couldn’t hold it against him. She was just plain interesting to look at.

We all took lemonade, which she brought to us in glasses with little ivy leaves ringing the rim. I thought I saw her add a little extra something to hers before she went back to a pile of laundry on her table.

“So,” she said, picking up a white T-shirt with the ghost of a grease stain on it. “Y’all want to hear about Elijah.”

Collette nodded in midsip, hurrying to swallow so she could answer proper. “Yes, ma’am. Everything you remember.”

Miss Nan smiled with her mouth closed, like she’d remembered a secret. “Well, first off, he was something to look at—long ol’ eyelashes, the sweetest damned smile. His mama wouldn’t let him wear his hair long, but he got enough in front to feather it.”

She took a deep drink of her lemonade and picked up another shirt. “Anyhow, he was a boy. He ran all over, joyriding, playing stickball, sneaking into the movies. His mama didn’t know about all that. There was plenty she didn’t know.”

Condensation trickled down my glass, giving me a good reason to have the shivers. Miss Nan’s sunny face had clouded over, an old storm new all over again.

“Was she strict?” I asked.

“Oh hell yes,” Miss Nan said, and reached for her glass. “Babette Landry had herself one perfect baby boy, and she planned on keeping him that way.”

The hard edge in Miss Nan’s voice made
Babette
sound like a curse.

Subtle as I could, I elbowed Collette. Ben had the sense to talk out loud. “How come?”

Fortifying herself with another swallow of lemonade, Miss Nan went back to folding. “She had him late, first, last, and only. Elijah was a bandage baby, the kind a woman has to patch a marriage up when it starts falling apart.”

We all nodded, and I leaned over my glass. “Did he hate her for it?”

I didn’t mean to sound so hungry, but she knew
so
much. Gossipy things, real things—it was like eating sugar straight from the bowl.

Stopping midfold, Miss Nan trained a slow look in my direction. “Why do you care so much about old Elijah Landry? Your daddy been reminiscing?”

“Sort of,” I lied bravely. My eyes watered when Collette pinched the side of my thigh. I’d have appreciated getting her approval without the bruises. “He just talked about the football team.”

Hesitation weighted the moment. Miss Nan wrapped her arms around herself, clutching a blue dress shirt, for what seemed like forever. Then, like somebody’d flipped her switch, she started going again.

“Now, look. He loved his mama all right. All men do—you girls remember that—but the older he got, the less he wanted to be her doll baby. She had too many rules. No swimming because he might drown. No hunting because he might get shot. No driving because he might crash.” Miss Nan tossed the shirt into the basket and reached for another, so bitter I could feel her prickle on my own skin.

“No girls because he might get one in trouble. She might as well have said no living, because that’s what she meant. Babette wrapped him up in tissue paper, and she hated every one of us who tried to tear it off.”

“If it’s all right to ask, ma’am,” Ben said, itching to hurry her, “were you there when he went missing?”

Grabbing a brown paper bag from beneath the table, Miss Nan shook it hard to open it. It rattled like caught thunder. “I was that boy’s first and last kiss, Mr. Duvall.”

Collette almost lunged off the couch she was so excited. “For real?”

“I was there the night before.” The wistful look came back, and Miss Nan blindly stuffed shirts in the bag. “He’d been in the hospital. Babette didn’t want us bothering him when he came home, but I snuck in anyway. Climbed right into his window and lay down beside him . . .”

“What was he in the hospital for?” I asked, on the edge of my seat. “My daddy didn’t say.”

Necklace glittering in the light, Miss Nan stopped, her pretty features smoothing. Escaped streaks of lipstick haloed her mouth. She waited a second, then said, “I don’t know. Just sick, I guess.”

We jumped when she punched the stapler three times fast to seal up the bag. Everything warm and cozy in Miss Nan’s trailer bled away.

Feeling like intruders, we shifted uncomfortably, trying to talk to each other with our eyes, until Collette got brave. “All right, then, but what do you think happened to him?”

“I think his bitch of a mother killed him, that’s what I think.” She slammed the stapler once more, then thrust the bag at us. “Y’all run that over to Duane Jessee for me. Tell him it’s a dollar more for the dress shirt.”

After we dumped off Duane’s laundry, we took our time heading to Ben’s house.

“She was definitely drinking,” Ben said, kicking an old split tennis ball into the weeds. “And she was lying when she said she didn’t know why he was in the hospital.”

Miss Nan had started out sweet and gotten mad so fast. . . . My head felt full, stretched tight with new information. “I know, she so was!”

Collette tugged a stick free from a tangle of brambles, using it as a cane. The wood bent under her weight, a curl of willow in her hand, but she seemed happy enough to keep going that way. “Still, I don’t think Old Mrs. Landry killed him.”

“Where’d you get that from? You can’t just decide without evidence.” Ben looked over at her, his frown suspicious.

“I have evidence.” Whipping up dust with the end of her cane, Collette hurried ahead, turning so she could walk and talk to us at the same time. “In her heart, I imagine Miss Nan believes every word she said, but don’t you think she told the police Elijah’s mama did it? I would have.”

“Maybe the police didn’t care.”

Ben and Collette turned on me like I’d gone soft in the head. They hadn’t seen the look on Deputy Wood’s face, though. They hadn’t heard him laugh about it, like Elijah’s going missing was nothing to worry about. “The police thought they were wasting their time looking for him. Why would they listen to her when they all thought he ran off?”

“They wouldn’t,” Collette gave her stick another twirl and fell into step with us. “We’ll have to ask him.”

“Where are we meeting?” Ben asked.

“My house.” I would have rather met at the graveyard, but it was better to bend like Collette’s willow cane than get snapped. I even managed to come up with a good side. “I can’t get caught out after dark if I’m at home, can I?”

Ben shook his head, leaning forward to look at me past Collette. “I guess not. You don’t plan on calling the police on me like you did Elijah, do ya?”

Snorting, I shrugged. I’d had enough embarrassment on my front porch to last me a good long time, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a little fun with it. “I might, so you’d best come to the door instead of sneaking in my window like you usually do.”

Collette’s quiet turned chilly, and I shrank. I didn’t know why I’d said it. It just sounded funny to me: a big, foolish joke nobody could possibly take seriously. But she did. She had frost in her voice when she asked, “What time does your daddy leave for work?”

“Eight-thirty or thereabouts.”

Tossing her cane into the bushes, Collette veered off when we got to the corner. “I’ll be there at nine o’clock,” she said. She hurried away with her head held high, leaving a little bit of winter in her wake.

chapter eight